At this point several of the audience will simply slide off their seats on to the floor and wallow about there, snorting.
The next verse had better be a love-verse.
Thompson wooed a lovely maid
Every evening in the shade,
Meaning, I am much afraid,
To hide his ugly head...
Head is not very good, I admit, but we must have said in the last line, and as we were mad enough to have rhymes in the first verse we have got to go on with it.
But when he proposed one night—
Did it by electric light—
Mabel, who retained her sight,